A Call Center (CC) system is a customer service system established via telecommunication CC technology. A user dials a unified access number of the CC through a phone terminal device. An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) device of the CC provides a voice navigation service to the user. The user selects service content as needed by pressing a key according to a prompt of a voice menu. If an automatically-played voice service fails to meet a requirement of the user, the user may switch to a human service by pressing a key as provided in a voice system. After the user switches to the human service, the CC system will queue the user according to the type of the service required by the user, find an idle agent having a corresponding skill, and guide the call of the user to the agent such that the agent may serve the user.
FIG. 1 is a diagram of a structure of an existing CC system. As shown in FIG. 1, in a current Internet Protocol CC (IPCC) or a Next Generation CC (NGCC), both a platform and an agent are limited in capacity. An agent is connected to a CC data network directly, or crossing a network of agents through a firewall, so as to be connected to a CC Computer Telephony Integration (CTI device) device. A softphone or an IP phone used by an agent accesses the CC data network across the network of agents through a Session Border Controller (SBC), so as to be connected to a CC Automatic Calling Distributor (ACD) device. In the current IPCC or NGCC, an agent software configuration is local to the agent, and includes information such as an address port of a server, a recording parameter and a playing parameter.
In a Next Generation CC cloud (NGC3), the requirement of dynamic scheduling of NGC3 resources is met thanks to use of a virtual machine and a resource pool, and a CTI&ACD device (integrating CTI device and ACD functioning simultaneously) is deployed for dynamic device deployment and resource resizing.
In NGC3, in order to meet requirements of linear capacity increase and dynamic resizing, instead of using a small-size machine or a Personal Computer (PC) server with a single node, a CTI&ACD device is deployed using virtual machines each with a small capacity and using a resource pool, and the overall capacity of the NGC3 is extended with multiple devices or resources. When the capacity of the NGC3 system is insufficient, devices or resources may be added. When the capacity of the NGC3 system is more than enough, the system may release part of the devices or resources dynamically. At the same time, an NGC3 cloud CC has to meet the support of a cloud desktop by cloud computation and support agent access at multiple locations.
The following issues may exist in applying a conventional NGCC agent system and a logging method thereof to the NGC3:
1) in a conventional NGCC, an agent parameter is configured locally; while in the NGC3, it is very difficult for a system administrator to configure a parameter of the agent on site at each location due to widely-distributed cloud agents;
2) in a conventional NGCC, a single CTI device and a single ACD device fail to meet requirements on a cloud CC in the NGC3, such as linear capacity increase and dynamic resizing;
3) in the NGC3, as there are multiple CTI&ACD devices with dynamic resizing, an agent cannot determine which CTI&ACD device should be used at present;
4) due to limitation of capacity of an SBC and a firewall, as well as requirements of access network routing, each CTI&ACD device in the NGC3 may be mapped to different addresses on each SBC and firewall, and thus an agent cannot determine which mapped address should be used at present.
Therefore, a conventional way of connecting an agent and an agent phone to a single device node fails to meet a requirement of the NGC3, which requires a new way of realizing a cloud agent.